Online Diaries: Transformation of Medium and Meaning

In her book Writing Machines, N. Katherine Hayles writes, “Literature was never only words, never merely immaterial verbal constructions. Literary texts, like us, have bodies, an actuality necessitating that their materialities and meanings are deeply interwoven” (Hayles, 107). As Hayles emphasizes numerous times, the form or material of a text is critically important to its meaning. Applying this sentence to the diaries, which have shifted from print form to an online medium, would imply that the meaning, use, and purpose of diaries have radically changed as they entered and expand in the online world. Through studying the history of diaries and the reflections of the first online diarists, however, it appears that the current, public form of blogs has not changed the basic purpose of journals but instead added beneficial aspects to diaries, the most important on which is the formation of communities.

Current Mood: creative

Will anyone care that I’m publishing a (semi) analytical paper on LiveJournal? Has anyone does this before? Am I destroying the “academic” aspect of this paper by including my own reflections on my writing process and by posting it in a LiveJournal?

Though a devoted diary-keeper when I was young, I’ve never used an online diary before. I’ve never let anyone see my diaries. To be honest, the concept of blogs and online diaries used to seem completely absurd to me. After all, I thought, isn’t a diary supposed to be completely private reflections? Something no one sees except the writer? Aren’t online diarists self-promoting, and don’t they leave out their true thoughts because they know they are writing for the public?

Yes would have been my answer to these questions three months ago, before I started a class with postliterate   . I am such a private person that even the thought of posting academic writings on our class blog made me anxious and uncomfortable. But (and here’s where the beauty of education comes in) I’ve come away with a completely different view. Sure, I still wonder why some people use blogs or online diaries the way they do. But blogging for class brings a whole new, exciting, and somewhat personal aspect to the class, and learning and analyzing online literature and blogs while simultaneously blogging as a class is especially rewarding and self-critical.

So, here I am, succumbing to what I used to consider “the dark side.” Though this is nothing too personal, I’m posting my thoughts and reflections online. Why, you ask? Well, for one, I am deeply intrigued by why so many people post journals online. As of the time I’m writing this, there have been 11, 649, 960 journals and communities created since 1999 on LiveJournal. With about two-thirds of these journals from women, an overwhelming majority from the United States (3195985), with the most coming from California, and with eighteen and nineteen year-olds ruling the age demographic of users, this makes for a surprisingly large number of LiveJournalers. And that’s leaving other blog and journal sites out. Just look at this.

Based on these numbers, I feel like these questions are begging to be asked: Why do so many people use online diaries? What does posting a diary entry online offer that keeping a private journal does not? Even more importantly, is the meaning of a diary changed when it’s posted online and no longer private, and if so, how? The more I learn about the history of diaries, the more blogs I read, and the more I post blog or journal entries, the more I see that they offer something radically new and exciting. So join me as I explore and personally reflect on the history, use, and meaning of diaries as they are transformed into the digital age.

The more I learn about the history of diaries, the more blogs I read, and the more I post blog or journal entries, the more I see that they offer something radically new and exciting. So join me as I explore and personally reflect on the history, use, and meaning of diaries as they are transformed into the digital age.

Current Location: Not telling
Current Mood: inspired
Current Music: None; I'm writing and can't do two things at once

In order to see if the transformation of diaries from print to an online medium has affected its meanings, I need to first define what a diary is and examine the history and evolution of diaries. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, a diary is a “daily record of events or transactions, a journal; specifically, a daily record of matters affecting the writer personally, or which come under his personal observation” (www.oed.com). Although journals are sometimes separated from diaries because they are specifically defined as records of one’s travels, the words “diary” and “journal” can be used synonymously, and, for the purpose of this paper, I will use them interchangeably. While the birth of diaries—credited to East Asian Cultures (Wikipedia)—is fascinating, I want to focus on the use of dairies during the last few centuries. The history of diaries in the United States from the eighteenth to twentieth centuries is of special interest to me in this project, because, as historian Lisa Weems points out, although during that period the “form remained stable” as a “vehicle for self-expression and discovery” (Weems et al, 122), the content shifted over the eras. Through analyzing how the content and meaning changed over time, I can see how the transition in form from print to online either toppled or enriched its use as a “vehicle for self-expression.”

Current Mood: contemplative

Although diaries are often thought of as historically private documents, in the eighteenth century they were public and often used as open, running letters between family members or scrutinized by outside figures (Greer, 300). In fact, as E. Jennifer Monaghan points out, “The best single characterization of the journal is perhaps that it was an open site for family communication” (Monaghan, 12). Although diaries kept what is seen as their typical functions, such as recording events and attire, their writers knew they were writing for an audience and acknowledged their readers as listeners. Monaghan uses the example of Anna Green Winslow, who wrote from 1771-1773, to demonstrate the purpose of diaries during that century. Through Anna’s diary, which she wrote while she lived with her aunt and attended school in Boston, it is clear that the purpose of diaries was to bring families together (Monahgan, 13). Portions of the diary were sent off to her parents, who would read and send comments back on it. She also wrote for a local audience: Her aunt and visitors to her home in Boston read and commented on her entries in the margins, or the visitors were treated to readings from it. Anna would later write in her diary about her embarrassment of reading. She also looked over previous entries and critiqued her own writing (Monahgan, 14). In other words, during the eighteenth century, diary-writing was a metalinguistic project, because diarists such as Anna had “to think about writing as an object outside the writer” (Monahgan, 14).

The eighteenth century diarist is very similar to the personal blogger of today, who is often aware of her or his audience and usually prepared to receive criticism or compliments from readers, as well as critique and revise previous posts. In other words, the purpose of diaries in the eighteenth century as public communication devices, in addition to being vehicles of self expression, seems much more compatible with online diaries today.

Current Mood: excited

During the nineteenth century, diaries began to transition into private documents, but they were still used in a similar fashion to blogs as communication and critiquing tools. Parents often promoted journal-keeping through giving their children blank books, so writing in diaries was often a somewhat forced endeavor. As historicist Jean Carr says, diaries “were never fully private, since such materials were read, sometimes edited, and often expressively sent to parents or teachers" (Carr, 53). Again, comments were made in the margins by teachers, and these blank book journals served the dual purpose of giving the children freedom of expression while also providing the diarists with advice and instruction from the parents or teachers (Carr, 53). For example, Ralph Waldo Emerson encouraged his daughter, Ellen Emerson, to write entries to him. She was open and honest with her emotions, while he critiqued her spelling and her tastes; in other words, through the diary, the father-daughter bond grew and Ellen’s writing ability also improved (Carr, 53-54).

To summarize, as tools of communication, bonding, learning, and self-exploration, diaries during the nineteenth century were much more similar to the public diaries of the eighteenth century or today than what they evolved into during the twentieth century.

Current Mood: dorky

It was only in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century when diaries became extremely private—often with a lock and key—and in seeming opposition to the public, personal blogs of today (Greer, 300). An article from a 1936 edition of the Ladies Home Journal offer hints at this transformation. In a didactic section of the magazine entitled “Dear Diary”, journalist Elizabeth Woodward instructs girls how they should define themselves through reading and writing and tells readers, “Even kid brothers know that diaries are extra-special private! So why not cut loose and say what you think in yours?” (Woodward, 194). Diaries became private texts in which people could record emotion and events that they wanted to hide from others, including authority figures.

Through looking at the use and purpose of diaries during the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries, it is clear that writing has almost come full circle, with the “newest form on the web similar to those kept by girls in the eighteenth century” (Greer, 300), in which they were much more public, editable documents.

Current Mood: cynical

Upon further analysis, many of the seemingly “private” diaries of the twentieth century actually became public documents, viewable to anyone with a desire to see. Perhaps many diarists thought that they were writing private documents, but more than 16,000 diaries have been published since book publishing began (Wikipedia). This awareness of the publication of diaries was certainly common knowledge to my friends and me, and I dare say to many diarists, many of whom may have dreamt of one day having their words in print. Some writers, such as twentieth-century diarist Beth Twigger, made this dream possible by saving diaries from her youth so that she could donate them to local libraries (Schrum, 117). Certainly she and many other diarists were conscious of a possible future audience, even if they didn’t want one, when they wrote.

In addition, during the twentieth century, “private” diaries were often shared with friends as social activity to cement friendships (Schrum, 117). June Calender wrote in her diary in 1955 that a friend "read most of the diary preceding this one and got mad a couple of times but got over it pretty well" (Schrum, 117). So even during an era when diaries were meant to be secretive, they were shared and used as public exposures of emotion. It seems that in many respects the notion of privacy with diaries is a false one.

Furthermore, many of these diaries, even those truly intended to be private, were written as if the diarist were writing to someone else. The way in which many diarists begin their entries —“Dear Diary”—calls into question possible or imagined audiences (Schrum, 117), and sometimes diarists even gave their diaries names, such Anne Frank, who called her journal “Kitty” (Wikipedia). The diary is treated as a friend and listener, even if there isn’t a tangible audience.

I raise these many points of how “private” diaries were actually public, or thought of as public, to demonstrate the ways in which the internet lends itself as a medium suited for diaries. The evolution of the diary onto the online stage almost seems like a natural transformation and a return its original, public use.

Current Mood: confused

"What is it about diaries, I wonder? You can't be honest in them—these pages are one long succession of poses of one kind or another—and if you were honest I don't know whether it would be much better. It's a strange kind of conceit that makes a totally unimportant person want to record for posterity." -- Yvonne Blue, a teenage diarist from the mid-1900’s (Schrum, 118)

I post this quote to call into question whether, in both the private form of the twentieth century and the public form of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and today, diaries ever truly contain “honest” information about their scribe. No matter the presence of an audience or not, according to numerous critics, writing always involves “creating” a self. As Jane Greer says, both private and public diaries are “highly performative and are composed in complex cultural contexts that both enable and constrain what can be read and written" (Greer, 300). Both readers and writers of diaries must keep in mind how performative they are, and Kelly Schrum reiterates that diaries “are productions rather than unmediated reflections of life" (Schrum, 116-117). Walter Ong extends this creative aspect to all writing, such as fiction, memoirs, letter writing, and diaries. He believes that writing is a solipsistic exercise that involves creating a fictional audience (Ong, 100), and he thinks this is especially true for personal diaries:

“Even in a personal diary addressed to myself I must fictionalize the addressee. Indeed, the diary demands, in a way, the maximum fictionalizing of the utterer and the addressee. Writing is always a kind of imitation talking, and in a diary I therefore am pretending that I am talking to myself. But I never really talk this way to myself. Nor could I without writing or without print” (Ong, 101).

Thus, in a sense, writing in a diary is the most performative writing one can do, for it requires fictionalizing oneself, which wouldn’t be possible without the act of writing. It is because writing is always performative, always a production, and always “imitation talking”, whether one is seemingly writing for oneself or for others, that the transfer of diaries from the private sphere to a public sphere does not drastically change what is written.

In “The Labyrinth Unbound: Weblogs as Literature,” Steve Himmer shifts this discussion of the fictionalizing of diaries to blogs. He says that it’s important not to think that “the self presented on a weblog is a ‘complete’ or even an accurate one: just as in journalism, memoir, or fiction, decisions are made about what to include and what to exclude. The weblogger, in that sense, can be read as fictional, as a character, in precisely the same ways that Andy Rooney or James Joyce can be—furthering the collapse between factual and fictional, public and private, and distinct genres in general” (Himmer).  In attempting to document themselves through writing about their daily actions, feelings, and opinions, webloggers actually create characters. Like any diary, personal blogs are performative and fictional, so the shift of diaries to an online medium is simply another extension of this “collapse” of both factual and fictional, private and public that was already present in early diaries.

Current Mood: bouncy

Because of the similarities of writing for an audience and for oneself, it is no surprise that, according to the first online diarists of 1995, the overall meaning and purpose of online diaries (often now called blogs) is no different from the diaries of the past. Blogs have the same features of any other diaries; they are typically informal, introspective writing that records daily activities or thoughts. On the Diary History Project (DHP), which collected reflections from the first bloggers on their process of writing online dairies, blogger Deb says, “My journal has been my venting post, my confessor, and an online baby book” (DHP). Diaries still document the activities of daily life and still allow for diarists to “confess” inner feelings; although it seems like the accessibility of blogs to the public might drastically change their purpose or meaning, it doesn’t. Jim Lawrence explains, “My eldest child told me ‘Gee, Dad, I didn't know you were such an exhibitionist.’ I don't think of it that way. I just think of it as sharing a few thoughts with friends... things I might jot down in a letter to a friend... what happened in my day, something amusing that I read or saw, a book or movie review, a political rant, memories of childhood... whatever” (DHP). Although clearly aware of an audience, Lawrence wrote in his blog as he would write in any other diary or letter.

Of course, the knowledge of a potential audience may encourage or shape why some people write blogs, but they still serve the basic purpose they did before: providing an space for emotions or thoughts. I think that CarolynBurke, who began writing in 1995, best describes the dual emotions behind writing in a blog: “I needed an outlet to talk about myself, privately and with someone listening” (DHP). The basic meaning and purpose of diaries—to provide outlets—has not changed since its transformation to the online, public form; however, as Burke points out, the audience has switch from being either family, friends, or imagined to being often unknown but certainly present.

Current Mood: hopeful

Nevertheless, the public access to blogs has somewhat changed the meaning of diaries through creating legal issues and making some bloggers cater to their audiences. Returning to a point I raised in my top post, according to Hayles, material and meaning are deeply connected. She writes, “Books are more than encoded voices; they are physical artifacts whose material properties offer potent resources for creating meaning” (Hayles, 107). Because anyone with internet can access blogs (as long as the blogger’s privacy settings allow for anyone to see), the internet as a medium has added a few complications to diary-writing. As Carolyn Burke says, “Many online diarists, journal writers, and now bloggers encountered problems with friends, family, and employers (actual and potential). I always held myself out as immune. Perhaps I was wrong” (DHP). Unlike the eighteenth and nineteenth-century diaries that were used between family members and friends, or the twentieth-century diaries that were kept private or published posthumously, blogs are truly open to the public and, as such, cause many bloggers to run into legal issues, such as the lawsuits Burke’s employers filed against her. Using bloggers’ words as evidence, companies, friends, and even family members can sue bloggers. The internet allows blogs to be extremely widely available, so online diarists have to be much more aware of what they write.

Similarly, because of this public accessibility, many bloggers are much more aware of their potential audience and begin to cater their writing to that audience. In order to avoid lawsuits, online diarists may avoid certain topics, such as the workplace, or write more favorably about some topics than they normally would. In other words, the knowledge of potential readers may change the meaning of the blog in some writers’ minds. For example, blogger Jesse Chan-Norris, who started blogging in 1997, writes, “I know that there are people out there, and I care more these days about catering to them. There is a balance now. I now write knowing that what I say can have an effect on people” (DHP). For both good and bad, writing for a public and unknown audience may have an effect on the way certain bloggers write.

Nevertheless, there are some bloggers who at least claim to write as if they were writing for a private journal. For instance, Eric Allen says “I didn't read other journals, this was purely for my own benefit-I really didn't care if anyone else read it either” (DHP). Allen says he writes for himself and purely for his own benefit, so perhaps he avoids catering to his audience.

Current Mood: nervous

Despite the added, negative aspects of potential lawsuits and threatening audiences of blogs, the ability to generate a large readership through the internet has given online diarists the chance to learn from one another and create communities. Like in the eighteenth and nineteenth century diaries, readers have the ability to post comments on blogs, so they provide a much more interactive, fruitful dialogue than private diaries. As Carolyn Burke says, “Suddenly I had an audience from the Internet. Nameless, faceless people - the Internet - spoke back to me. The Internet, a blur of people, became my therapist, my confidant, my intimate friend” (DHP). Unlike diaries of the past, online diaries allow bloggers to receive feedback from people they don’t know, who are perhaps from a different country or have completely different opinions from them. It is through this ability to connect with very dissimilar people that many bloggers and readers learn from one another. 1996 blogger Lunesse says, “I learned tons about others, of course. Lives I never will live myself, thoughts I wouldn't have come across on my own. I have learned how to better process and work through some things in my life as a result of reading how others went through similar things” (DHP). This access to the emotions, activities, and lives of others provides readers the opportunity to learn about and learn from many people unlike themselves.

Additionally, because online diaries are (or have the potential to be) very personal, many bloggers form strong connections and communities through reading about one another’s online lives. Some bloggers end up meeting each other; for instance, Jennifer Wade says, “I've met nearly thirty other diarists, and I count many of them among my closest friends” (DHP). Or bloggers, such as Jesse Chan-Norris, whom I quoted in the context of catering to audiences, form such strong connections that they marry.

Thanks to linking to other blogs and the connections bloggers form with each other, bloggers’ thoughts and ideas often grow from one another. As scholar Jill Walker says, “In closeknit communities, like LiveJournal, the narration of weblogs sometimes seems like a group autobiography” (Walker, 16). The communities formed through blogs are unusually strong. I think Steve Schalchlin puts it succinctly and well when he writes: “Our diaries illuminate. They change peoples' lives. They create community and family” (DHP).

Therefore, blogs, though still diaries at a basic level, are in many ways so much more than written diaries. They can have links to articles that pertain to what the writer is thinking about; they can link to friends’ blogs, so the reader can read about the same event in the eyes of a different person; and, as I’ve said before, they can create communities through these links and posted comments (Walker, 16).

Current Mood: rejuvenated

I hope I have shown through the historical transformation of diaries, the misconception of “private” diaries as private, and the idea of all writing as performative, that blogs do not radically change the meaning and purpose of diaries as vehicles of expression. Instead, the online form and its ability to generate numerous readers actually contributes to the role of diaries in people’s lives, through allowing users to form strong connections and communities and learn from one another.

Current Mood: accomplished

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